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At the Fayetteville Free Library (FFL) we have embraced the idea of community engagement in a big way. We recognize that our community members are generous, talented, and have many varied and unique skill sets. Therefore, we invite them to share what they are passionate about and what they know – engaging them with the library in deeply meaningful ways.

In order to capture this information, we developed a new community engagement tool that is available in our public spaces. This form has replaced our former volunteer application, which only allowed for more traditional types of volunteer activity. On the new form we ask three quick and simple questions:

1. What do you love to do?
2. What are you passionate about?
3. Would you be willing to share what you know with your community members?

Though the tool was originally developed in support of our makerspaces like the FFL Fab Lab (fflib.org/make), it is used organization wide and has proved useful in early literacy and children’s programs as well as making.

For example, after our Music and Movement class, a parent who had attended the program with her two kids approached me and told me she was an early childhood music teacher. She said she loved the program and asked if I had a degree in the field. This interaction was the perfect opportunity for us to encourage her to share her expertise with the rest of the community. I told her that I did not have an educational background in music, and asked if she had ideas for how we could expand or improve on the program. I gave her the community engagement form and used the tool to capture her enthusiasm and to provide her with the platform to get involved.

Free to Be

All new community participants meet with our executive director, and we are especially careful with which patrons we invite to work with children. As it turns out, this patron went on to help me plan and co-facilitate many sessions of Music and Movement. She also developed a planning checklist of music concepts and motor skills to cover in each session, and her unique perspective led to many wonderful additions to the program. In a similar experience, a woman called the library and informed us that she was a former preschool teacher and loves to play the guitar for children. We were able to capture her interest and meet with her to develop a new program series called “Free to Be.” Our patrons LOVE this program, which features live guitar music, silly song writing, and acting, and it’s something I never could have offered, because I don’t play an instrument. Our old volunteer model tended to slot people into roles we had identified a need for, but our new approach invites community members to come to us with their ideas, interests, and passions. We open up the library as a platform on which they can share their talent and expertise to make meaningful connections.

While my examples are focused on children’s programming, this tool is being used daily in every part of our library and has parlayed into a new, booming volunteer base. As a result of this philosophy and approach, we have been able to broaden and deepen our library programming, offering more opportunities, on a much wider range of topics, at a fraction of the cost. It also strengthens our community, as individuals build relationships and skills that they would not otherwise been able to, if not for the library. Do you engage community participants in programs and how do you do it?

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Courtesy photo from guest blogger

Our guest blogger today is Stephanie C. Prato. Stephanie is the Director of Play to Learn Services at the Fayetteville Free Library (FFL), NY. With experience in youth services, community outreach, leadership, instruction, and technology, she has developed innovative programs for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-aged children. She is an active member of the American Library Association and serves as a member of the Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee of ALSC. If you have any questions, email her at [email protected].

Please note as a guest post, the views expressed here do not represent the official position of ALA or ALSC.

If you’d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at [email protected].

The post Community Engagement and Early Literacy Programs appeared first on ALSC Blog.

The first item in YALSA's Teen Programming Guidelines states, "Create programming that reflects the needs and identities of all teens in the community." And the overview of this guideline goes on to say:

In order to ensure that library programming meets the needs of all members of the community and does not duplicate services provided elsewhere, library staff should have a thorough understanding of the communities they serve. Library staff must continually analyze their communities so that they have current knowledge about who the teens in their community are. They must also develop relationships with community organizations already working with youth. Library staff play a crucial role in connecting teens to the community agencies and individuals that can best meet their needs.

The part of the overview that I think sometimes is difficult for library staff working with teens is the "continually analyze their communities so that they have current knowledge...." It's easy to get in a rut and not really notice how a community is changing and/or how needs and interests of teens change. For example, I live in a city that is going through a housing (and business) boom. Neighborhoods are changing in large and small ways. In some areas of the city where families never lived before families are moving in. In other areas of the city where teens were not a large population the age group in the area is growing, and in other areas it's declining. As the ways neighborhoods are changing is fluid, census data can't really help with continuous assessment as the data is older than you need it to be.

That means that the only way to continually check-on on teen populations and needs and interests is to connect deeply and continuously with the community. For example, At least three or four times a year (put it on your calendar) go out into the community and ask other agencies what they are seeing in terms of teen demographics and needs. Focus not just on schools, which is sometimes the easiest community partner to work with, but check-out Boys and Girls Clubs, youth employment programs, YMCA/YWCA's, parks and recreation departments, out-of-school time providers, and so on. In your community try talking to at least two new agencies that work with teens at least every quarter.

Make sure that you don't go in and say, "Here's what the library has and does for teens." Instead go in and ask questions about what the agency staff notice that teens need and what's missing in what teens have access to. Make sure to ask what the demographics are of the teen population that the agency works with. Don't assume that the demographic you see the most is what the rest of the community is seeing and working with. If you notice that there's a difference that's something for you to pay attention to and consider in terms of the best way to serve different teen populations.

I know that time can be an issue when working on a plan like this. It takes time to schedule a visit, prepare for the visit, have the visit, analyze the results of the visit, and then keep in touch with the community agencies that you talk with. However, if you do take the time to go out and hear what others have to say about teens in the community, you'll be able to develop programs that meet the needs of actual teens in your area. As a colleague of mine says, "I learned not to program from the gut." If you work with the community to continuously analyze your teen population you won't program from the gut you'll program for an actual need.

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Since ALA Mid-Winter was conveniently located in Chicago this January, I decided to make the trip and attend the conference on Saturday. I had been to professional conferences before, but all for writing centers, not libraries. My first thought upon walking into the conference center was the same familiar feeling I got in writing center conferences: a bunch of people who are all passionate about one thing: libraries. I always love the energy at conferences; the energy that helps renew your passions and reminds you why you do what you do day in and day out.

My focus at Mid-Winter was seeing how ALA and the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation worked together to promote libraries to work with their communities to affect social change. They believe that public libraries should use their position in a community to help facilitate conversations that could lead to effective change. This is all under the ALA umbrella of Transforming Libraries. I was interested in these sessions because during my first semester in graduate school, I found myself drawn to and working with communities (both talking about community ideas in class and then working with a community for my assistantship). I’m currently taking a community engagement class and was interested to see Harwood’s spin on engagement.

After some freight congestion, I was able to attend two out of the four sessions: intentionality and sustaining yourself. Intentionality focused on the three As: authenticity, authority, and accountability. They wanted to make sure you deeply knew the community you were working with and followed through on promises. The final session, on sustaining yourself, focused on knowing personally what keeps you going (ways to destress and relax) and who you can talk to about frustrations and triumphs. Both sessions stressed small group discussion, which gave me the opportunity to meet other librarians (in all variety of roles). There was good discussion all afternoon however I left wishing I could have heard more from the pilot libraries who were coached by Harwood. Two different libraries gave short intros to start the sessions, but in five minutes, you can’t learn much about all the successes (and also the roadblocks).

In some ways, I felt out of my element at ALA. I was simply a student, one who didn’t have any long term experience in libraries. I could listen to conversations but sometimes felt I had nothing to add. However, at the same time, I got this great sneak peak into the professional world I’m preparing to jump with two feet into. Public libraries and communities are a big deal right now and if I can present a resume with experience in working with and for communities, then I help to separate myself from the rest of my peers competing for the job opening. What ALA and Harwood are picking up on isn’t a new concept — public libraries have been working with communities since they first began. These sessions serve as reminders that we as librarians are serving our community and should be an open, safe place to have tough conversations and conversations that begin to work towards social change.

YALSA President Shannon Peterson and I have been talking about her presidential theme of Amplified: Speaking Up for Teens and Libraries, and we were discussing the effort to build strong ties between YALSA and our members and library administrators. In May and June, I wrote a six-part series for this blog on how to work with library managers and administrators. Those posts were based partly on a survey that YALSA conducted of members who identified as supervisors and managers. One of the things we asked was what were some of the buzz words, lingo, and hot topics that made managers prick up their ears and listen. So here are some of those terms and ways you might incorporate them into your conversations with your managers:

ROI. This is manager-speak for “return on investment.” It’s really pretty straightforward. Managers want to know that if the library invests time, money, personnel, and equipment on a service, program, or collection, there will be some return on that investment. What kind of return? Maybe you can demonstrate that the effort you invested in putting on a dynamite program resulted in increased circulation in a particular area or from a particular demographic. Maybe adding a service, like homework help, resulted in reaching a previously under-served segment of the community. The more you can collect data (track circulation before and after the program; keep count of the number of new cards that were issued to participants in a new program or service, etc.), the easier it will be for you to show your managers how much return you got from your investment.

Sustainability. This is a big one for managers. They want to know that any new (or existing) program, service, or collection is sustainable. Doing a program or creating a collection with one-time funds, like a grant or gift, is fine as far as it goes, but what happens next year and the year after? If you start a grant-funded homework center, for example, how are you going to pay for it in future years? Will you have to continue to seek grants or raise funds every year, or will it become part of the library’s budget? If it becomes part of the budget, will something else have to go? Who will be responsible for deciding? Sustainability requires long-term thinking.

Community Engagement, Community Health, Fostering Community. Managers have to see the library as part of the larger community. Your library director may sit on various community-wide committees or boards, or work closely with other city or county department heads. It is important to them that the library be seen as part of the community, not as something off to the side. This is especially true if the library is in effect competing for funds with these other departments. So the more your programs and services can demonstrate that the library is engaging the community and helping to create and sustain a healthy, enlivened community, the better. When you report on your teen volunteer program, for example, don’t just say how many teens volunteered for how many hours; talk about how the program helps teens be engaged in their community, and take pride and ownership in it.

Workforce Development; College and Career Readiness. These topics are related to community engagement. The library is excellently placed to be part of the greater local effort to ensure that community members are able to be productive members of society. Just be sure that your manager knows how your programs are helping teens get jobs, get into college, and prepare for careers. Highlight the skills your teen volunteers are learning. Promote any programs you do for SAT prep or college application writing. Be sure your director is aware when teen volunteers move on to become paid library workers.

Output Measures. Output measures tell how the library is being used: circulation, visits, reference questions, program attendance—as opposed to input measures, which tell you what you have to work with: collection size, budget, cardholders, etc. Output measures are often of great interest to library boards and administrators, so the more output measures you can supply to your director, the better. Some of these are simple counts; others can be calculated, like circulation per capita. So, for example, if you know how many teens are in your service area, and how many teen items are circulated (or how many items are checked out by teens), you can calculate teen circulation per capita. If you can show that this number is growing, as a result of your programs or collection decisions, this will get the attention of the people who make the decisions in your library.

Value-Added. This is pretty much what it sounds like: the “extras” of your services, programs, and collections, the things that go beyond expectations and make a positive contribution to the library and the community. Maybe you can show that your program not only entertained the teens, but brought in new users, and also recruited new volunteers for the library or other organization in the community: that’s value-add!

Organizational Culture. Every organization has its own culture, meaning its own values, vision, norms, systems, even language. Making sure that what you do fits into that organizational culture is a good way to be heard in the organization. Of course, sometimes we think our organizational culture needs to change: to be more positive about teens, for instance. It’s all right to strive to change organizational culture, but it is wise to do it gradually and, as much as possible, within the norms of the organization. And if you can show that something you want to do fits in with the vision and strategic plan of your library, you are more likely to be successful.

These are just a few terms that came up. You have probably heard others—maybe you have even wondered what they mean, or how you can fit into your manager’s view of the library. If you have questions, comments, or other examples to share, please do so in the comments. We all benefit when we understand one another!

Sarah Flowers

YALSA Past President